With the result of changing perceptions altering the demands of the travel industry, Viajecer, a tour operator in Brazil, meets these needs through providing an excellent combination of transformative and sustainable trips with social elements, culture, nature and history to increase travelers’ level of awareness about the places they are visiting.
Viajecer’s proposal is ‘to travel differently’ and by providing a large variety of experiences to several different orientations of travelers, everyone is able to maximize their enjoyment of the destinations and escape from the traditional/mainstream travel itineraries, which are usually provided. Our team at Ravel were so happy to interview Alice Morais, the CEO of Viajecer, to gain better understanding of Viajecer’s operations and experiences but furthermore their vision for the future, to continue growing while the travel industry begins to bloom again!
Appreciating that Alice had a background within the Advertising and Communications industry, we were eager to first understand a little bit more about the CEO’s influences and decisions behind forming the present day operations of Viajecer.
1. “I have seen that you have a background in advertising and communications - I am just therefore curious as to how you got into your current role as CEO and why do you enjoy this field of work that you are doing?”
“I have been working within the communications and advertising industry for a long time - about 15 years and my experience of working with travel professionally began 3 years ago. I have continuously loved it and have felt a lot of passion for this field of work which is why I decided to create Viajecer in 2020. I believe I have a different vision about travel and tourism, moreover there needs to be more importance placed on the initiatives of sustainability”.
Alice then continued to explain the importance of Viajecer providing trips with different experiences with large emphasis on creating harmony between ecosystems and travelers but also to grow the conscientiousness of travelers whilst they are experiencing the unique destinations.
2. “Having read more about your background I have seen that in 2020 you participated in a project for the resumption of tourism in Brazil - promoting several cities and destinations. How was this project and how did it play out?”
Alice explained how she has several connections and friends within the tourism industry who benefited from the initiative of the project as many tourism operators in Brazil were finding it difficult to make enough money prior to this. She created this initiative to resume tourism in Brazil and by working with a producer she was able to make some trips and travel experiences that were showcased across social media platforms. By producing content from all the different areas visited, the project certainly helped other tour operators' expertise of work, overall depicting the initiative's success.
3. “Viajecer builds sustainable and transformative trips with social activities, entertainment, culture, history and nature to increase people’s levels of awareness. In your opinion, how important do you think it is to include all these different senses in a trip? Are there more people willing to try out all these different things and aspects during their travels?”
Alice firstly explained the actual meaning behind Viajecer which comes from the combination of two Portuguese words; Viajar and Crescer wich respectively means: to travel and to grow. Appreciating these two elements can help us to further understand why it is not only important to just travel and see places but through different cultural and natural experiences travelers are also able to grow.
“I think travelers need to understand their host, and to appreciate who they really are. Through the travel we provide we can show what there really is to offer and see, especially with cultural aspects.”
“There is an area called Xingu, an indigineous territory. There are 16 different ethnical groups in this same area and they all speak different languages. I think if people could visit here and experience these different ways of living, they will see and appreciate different ways of life and how others live.”
4. “Due to the pandemic, traveling has slowed down and declined. But do you think that prior to this there was a real concern with the effects of over tourism and too many travelers in destinations causing issues such as pollution, overcrowding and damaging nature?”
“With regards to sustainability there is a very different vision now. Also about ecotourism as we are working with ecotourism and during the pandemic we were able/ managed to get around the effects of the pandemic in different ways. But I think the pandemic did successfully bring a different view to people about nature and our surroundings”.
